The silver lining to this is that I am pretty good at being alone anyway. I actually don’t mind sheltering in place since I can leave when I want to. Quarantine was awful. Not having a choice as to whether I stay in the apartment or not. Rick’s death. The process of announcing and dealing with the death of another.

But now it’s quiet time to process it, to get used to being solitary again, to get used to the uncertainty, to get used to the sadness at night when I’m trying to sleep, to get used to all the questions that keep me up at night that will never be answered.

Well…now I have the time and the command of the television to catch up on four years’ worth of Netflix. I pretty much stopped with entertainment at the beginning of law school up until a week ago. I wish I knew about I Think You Should Leave when I was studying for the bar exam because then I probably would have never taken the bar exam:

This is a sunny Monday, 3 weeks in, one week back at work, and five weeks away from the office. I have done some things. I bathe, groom, and get dressed every day again. I feed myself real food. I run errands. I made it to the dispensary and back and MacGuyvered a face mask from shit I found in the car because apparently now you have to wear a mask in Evanston if you go into any business. Those little things make me feel competent, and competence makes me feel capable.

Sweet, sweet emotional compartmentalization.

I am now listing things for sale or give away, which will be most of the things. If you’re in Chicago or passing through and need to purchase some things, let me know. Do you want an antique globe? Maybe some Wyland lucite sculptures? An Andre Gisson painting? A television? Furniture? Rugs? A heavy wrought iron headboard and footboard for a king sized bed?? A vintage green Air Force bomber jacket, XL? Silk ties? How about an XL one-of-a-kind, handmade Cosby sweater?

But I strive for normal every day in some small way, doing something specifically and intentionally to make this all normal. I turned off his phone and sent it back. I had sushi for the first time in years, which shouldn’t seem weird except for the fact that Rick was so against eating raw fish that I just gave it up. I got to eat dinner with the television off and Motown on.

It is strange to look around this home at all these reminders, most of it very much the same as they were when we died here. Every day I look at the chair he died in and think to myself that I would probably feel better if I just threw it out. But that means having to touch it and move it.

I can’t even get myself to pick up his ashes. They told me they could bring it curbside and put the ashes and his death certificate in the trunk so I don’t have to touch them or even see them before I get home so I can deal with finality in private.

But I like this compartmentalization thing I can do, and I’d like to write about astrology again.

Astrology to Death

I have written previously that there is no consensus on the astrology of death, and most of us can’t actually predict death in any astrological way. I think that’s because we tend to look at “death” as a life event, and thus like most other life events, can be predicted through transits and progressions. But death is not a life event: it’s a death event, the only death event we will have and the only non-life event we will experience if we are cognizant of it.

And while there is only one death event, there are many, many life events we will all have that could bring us to the moment of death, some worse than others, some more unavoidable than others. But we can’t tell which one is the big one.

But this is also human nature to not embrace the deaths of others. Rick died in front of me, but it didn’t register that he died, even though looking back, yeah, that would look like death to someone without any investment in whether or not he lives.

So we really can’t see the actually end of the life that we’re mapping out, just possibilities of events that could culminate in death.

What we can see in the chart, however, are factors that could trigger a death.

But that’s not strange for a lot of actual life events either, such as falling in love, separating, relocating, finding career success, having children, succumbing to disease, losing everything and starting over. There’s lots of cosmic opportunity, but not cosmic certainty.

So I’m not going to allow myself to explore Rick’s death astrologically anymore. I don’t want to get good at it. I don’t want to spin my way down a hole, calling it research.

Here’s something to get back to normal:

Look at this astrological tidbit:

Eros, Psyche, Chiron, and the Moon were all conjunct in Aries like a week ago. This would be a time in which new people (Aries) or young people (Aries) or naive or child-like people (also Aries) bust into (Aries) our lives in whatever house is ruled by Aries, promising to open up wounds (Chiron) that we have always had deep within us (Moon) related to sex and romance on a soul level (Eros and Psyche), initiating (Aries) us, calling us to take instinctive (Moon) action (Aries) to heal (Chiron) together, body (Eros) and soul (Psyche). With the ruling planet Mars in Aquarius, healing will be intellectual, or remote (remote therapy, perhaps?), or unconventional. Changes in taste in partners, or discovering that one prefers something in a partner that they weren’t seeking before, is possible.

This is not a transit for rebounds or forgiveness – it’s about new horizons, new people, new places. This is not a transit for asking what you can do for others; it’s about what we as individuals need, and that’s okay.

But most of us will not get this particular opportunity because we’re sheltering in place, alone or with the same people we’ve been with for a while. Sure, a lot of us will have the opportunity to ruminate on our taste in partners, what we go for, and what we actually need from another person. Do we have a chance to make changes, to shake things up? Probably not. But we may do so later. Or we may just stir internally as the heart turns over and tightens with existential and romantic hunger, because what whets the appetite for the mysteries of life more than having no chance to participate in it, and no certainty that you will?

Actually, I would be quite curious to find out if anyone actually experienced any outward manifestation of this transit. April 22nd or so. Let me know.